Dunno, but I suspect it has to do with build quality. If you're going to pound something all night, night after night, it had better be well built (and that includes girlfriends). I used to have a PK-5 which I eventually gave away (mainly because of the 13 pedal limit) but in the time I owned it, it never burped once, a testiment, I guess, to Roland build quality.

For the record, Diki, the "7" has 20 pedals (C-G) and a on-board expression pedal. If you plan on using the old B3 trick of tapping on a pedal (usually the A pedal) to get some attack on your left hand bass, forget it, doesn't work very well. Best use is to midi it to a bass program that has the attack, sustain, and release that you want, already built in.

chas

This discussion of bass pedals is great. chas is right about playing midi pedals in general. They are either flat dead or sustain for eternity. I bought an old set of Crumar PB2 to replace my PK5 and MidiStep pedals. The Crumar is old and self-contained. It has a 16' and 8' sound and... volume and sustain wheels. The adjustable sustain is what makes them so nice. Just enough to sound more realistic than the modern midi pedals - unless you go into your sound source and edit a sound specifically for the pedals.

I don't think anyone who plays pedals, plays them without inserting a little left hand. Today's music is very bass oriented, so playing those logs ain't what it used to be. I've seen Felix Cavalieri play foot bass in concert and he does a great job, but it's something most good B3 players could do. Today most guys you see playing B3 are standing up and don't even have the pedals attached.

I think there are a lot of ex-organ players here so this discussion should move to its own posting.

Thanks, chas. Yeah, I knew that about the PK-7 (20 note - I can get by with 18, though!), and of course, know all about the Roland build quality...!

But even so... $1300!

Only $300 less than an S900, dammit!

The thing about adding an extra transient to a LH bass line can be done with a vel-switched extra LH Part, these days. Just set it up so that only high velocity triggers it, and you do away with the pedals almost altogether (nice though they are!)...

Why is it that midi pedals do a lousy job with notes? I've used sounds that had a lot of presence and long release, but as soon as you use a midi keyboard, the note seems to lose all its dynamics and effects.

Not sure I got that, cassp... you mean when 'you use a midi keyboard, the note seems to lose all its dynamics and effects' you mean 'you use a MIDI pedal board'?

MIDI pedal boards don't usually send MIDI velocity (it's hard to control with your feet!), and you usually have to set up an arranger carefully for the MIDI pedals to access the same channel you are using for the M BASS Part, so it gets the same effects, but perhaps I'm just not reading this right....

Can you describe the problem better (are you using pedals now)?

Yeah, I did mean PEDALboard. Now you should know from owning one that a board like the PK5 is strictly note on/off or on/hold. If you play and physically hold a pedal down it will play at that set volume, but upon release there are none of the effects that are built into that sound. If you do the same on a pianokeyboard, the note reverberates, sustains, releases differently... all that stuff you would expect. Why can't pedalboards do that simply? They should be no different than, say a 25-note midi controller. Better?

I think it's a case of making sure that the pedals either actually DOES address the same Part that you are playing from the keyboard (which it doesn't, usually, coming in from the MIDI input), or finding a way to edit the Part it IS addressing with the sustain and so forth commands to get those on the bass part.

Do you have another MIDI keyboard you can send into the MIDI port to see if (when set to the same MIDI channel) you still get the same sound...?

What you MIGHT have to do (I've not done this myself, so take this advice with a grain of salt!) is set up a Sequence, with the Bass sound and parameters set the way you want (possibly Makeup Tools can get to the Sustain and effects parameters you want), and Link it to the UPG you are using.

But I could be totally off base, here. Derek Miles, I think, at roland-arranger is our pedal guru there. Maybe he can help you?

But my feeling is that the pedals are NOT addressing the same Part as you play for M BASS on the keyboard, and this is why you are hearing something different...

I don't need the help. I was only explaining a situation. I don't use midi pedals anymore, and it seems you aren't familiar with the problem either. How can you own a PK7 and not know how the bass notes sound? As I said earlier, they are either on/off or on/hold - unless thru some magical programming you gurus know, default parameters are changed. I ask you to set up any keyboard and just set up a bass patch. Forget about arranger mode, just go straight midi; you can try arranger mode later but it shouldn't make a difference. Plug in your PK7 and see the difference between hitting a note on the pedalboard and and the same note on the keyboard. A difference like night and day; that's what I'm talking about. If you've never played midi pedals then you don't know what happens. If you have, there is NO not knowing, it's so obvious.

That's why I went out and got an old set of Crumar pedals; self-contained sound, volume and sustain control. Simplicity.

Wrong guy, cassp... I don't own ANY pedals. Just trying to help...